1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to the field of information processing, and more specifically to developing session context from nonlinear Web site flow information.
2. Description of the Related Art
The use of networks, particularly the Internet, by users continues to rise as technology and interesting destinations increase. World wide Web (“Web”) sites continue to play an increasing role in the business models of many businesses. Sophisticated Web sites, such as many configuration Web sites, present a large number of navigation path options to a user, and, thus, a large amount of information about the user's activity and information presented to the user is potentially available for collection and analysis.
Historical information surrounding a user's Web site session can be very valuable information, particularly when attempting to understand the context of a user's Web session. However, reliably capturing this knowledge, recording it in a useful and accessible format, and properly interpreting nonlinear site flow events have proven elusive for conventional technology.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/324,764, filed Dec. 20, 2002, and entitled “GENERATING CONTEXTUAL USER NETWORK SESSION HISTORY IN A DYNAMIC CONTENT ENVIRONMENT”, inventors Daniel P. Karipides and Susumu Harada, (herein referred to as the “Karipides I Application”) describes a Web system that includes a session recording and parsing system and process (“SRP System”) that can capture a wide range of a user's session related information. In one embodiment, the SRP System includes two main components, data recording hooks and a parser. The SRP System includes a data recording hooks library that provides the ability to implement a dynamic, Web-based application and gather a wide-range of information about user's session activity. The SRP System parser analyzes the gathered and logged information from the data recording hooks and re-creates a session history, with a desired level of contextual detail, of every individual user's session. In one embodiment, the SRP System embodies a flexible design system that allows a designer to customize the type of information recorded so as to re-create the desired granularity of history. The Karipides I Application is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Many Web sites, such as automotive configuration Web sites, include complex applications that require most pages to be dynamically generated. To support dynamic page generation, these Web sites usually store session state data for every session. The state will change as the user navigates through the site. Knowing the actual progression of state changes is important in recreating the true context of a user's session. For example, the true context of a user's session can be important in identifying quality user sessions as described, for example, in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/699,148, filed Oct. 31, 2003, and entitled “IDENTIFYING QUALITY USER SESSIONS AND DETERMINING PRODUCT DEMAND WITH HIGH RESOLUTION CAPABILITIES”, inventor Daniel P. Karipides, (herein referred to as the “Karipides II Application”) which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. It is also often useful to analyze as many user sessions as possible. Discarding ambiguous data from nonlinear site flow records can eliminate a significant amount of valuable data.
Most conventional Web browsers support “back”, “forward”, “refresh”, new Web session initiating operations, and other recall operations that permit the user to arbitrarily return to previously-viewed pages. Correctly supporting recall operations can be problematic for Web sites as the Web site's current state is not necessarily the same as the state for the page to which the user is returning. To develop an accurate context of a user's session history, the Web site needs some way of recalling or reconstructing the user's state at any arbitrary page. Since this is a difficult problem to solve, most Web sites impose a linear site flow—even if the user tries to return to a page via a recall operation. Thus, an inaccurate or, at the very least, an ambiguous user history presents itself to a system attempting to develop user context from user session history.
FIG. 1 depicts a linear site flow 104 of a Web site 100. Initially, a Web server 102 displays Page 1 to a user as a result of a page request submitted via user's browser or other mechanism to Web server 102. The Web server 102 provides new Page 2 to the user's browser in response to a user New Page Request 1 action, such as selecting an embedded link in the currently displayed page. In response to New Page Request 2, the Web server provides a New Page 3 to the user's browser. The user next selects a back button of the browser. The Web server 102 considers the recalled page as a new Page 4 although New Page 4 is actually Page 2 again. The user next submits New Page Request 3, and the Web server 102 provides New Page 5 to the user, which is actually the fourth new page provided to the user's browser.
FIG. 2 depicts a nonlinear site flow 200 represented by a tree structure. Websites that do properly support reconstructing the user's state permit the user to have a nonlinear site flow like the tree structure depicted in FIG. 2. As in FIG. 1, the user begins with Page 1, submits New Page Request 1, and Web server 202 provides new Page 2 to the user's browser. After submitting New Page Request 2 and receiving new Page 3, the user selects the browser's back button, and Web server 202 provides previously viewed page 2 to the user. Thus, the Web server is aware that current state is actually the same as the former state when Page 2 was previously provided. From Page 2, the user requests new Page 4. However, many Web sites do not support recognition of nonlinear site flow. Furthermore, conventional technology does not support developing a contextual session record that accounts for nonlinear site flow.